Sinking in the Sand
by skipmcgee
Summary: Hermoine wonders if some things are better left unsaid.


**Title**: Sinking In the Sand

**Author:** Skt23

**Genre**: Harry/Ron slash, 3rd person POV

**Rating**: PG-13 at most

**Summary**: Hermoine wonders if some things are better left unsaid.

**Spoilers**: Every and anything relating to the Harry Potter franchise. Everything.

**A/N**: Another quickie, I wasn't lying when I said I had dozens of plot bunnies floating around in my head. I swear it's taken me longer to think up the damn title then it was to write the entire piece. I've been looking all over the net for a story like this and have come up with maybe 2 pieces, so I decided to write what I wanted to read. You want something done right, you do it yourself (or you beg your favorite writer until they cave and write it for you). In my case I was too impatient to wait, so here, without further ado, is the result of my insomnia and impatience (a great creative mix, let me tell you). Oh and if you're interested, the title is from Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet, number 152. How it fits this story, I'm not quite sure, unless you count my perspective on writing it.

Despite the fact that, if asked, Hermoine would have said she didn't want him, she was more than slightly upset to find out that Ron was indeed taken. Especially when she realized who had caught him.

Hermoine had found out quite by accident, and she was well aware that she wasn't meant to know. Why they were keeping it a secret she wasn't sure, since most people thought they were together anyways, but apparently that wasn't for her to know either. It certainly wasn't as though they had to be afraid of peoples' responses, most wizards and witches had seen stranger things than two blokes together, and being so isolated from the muggle world meant they had different views on the subject anyways. It wasn't a big deal, although maybe to someone like Harry, it was.

But Hermoine didn't know, and they certainly weren't telling. Oh, she played along, let them believe they had fooled her along with the rest of the school. And maybe that was the problem. Hermoine had always thought that they had seen her differently, that she wasn't just another student, another classmate, another _girl_. She had always believed she could trust them with anything, and it stung that they didn't feel the same. It was a pain that felt startlingly familiar to the pain she felt when she thought about the other reasons their relationship bothered her.

Hermoine had been the first of the three of them to have a real relationship; she'd also had more then the two of them combined, although that wasn't saying much. They were terrible with girls, the both of them, and never seemed to understand the way the female mind worked, not even the basics. She had always been the buffer between them, the one who could explain it all away and make sense of the silly and stupid things girls did. It never occured to her that it was more than just a phase, that they would never understand girls in that way. That maybe they didn't even want to.

She found herself looking at them all the time now, her world tinted with rose colored glasses. Everything they did she found herself examining in a new light, with a new perspective. When Harry glanced at Ron over his Charms book, did it mean something? When Ron brushed Harry's shoulder standing up at the end of class, was it accidental? What were they really laughing about over dinner, the article in the sports magazine they were reading, or some private joke? Nothing they did seemed innocent anymore, and that bothered Hermoine more than she would have thought.

She supposed she should have seen it coming; the rest of the school clearly had, but she had chosen to ignore the whispers that had started around 3rd year and really gained momentum half-way through 4th. When Hermoine had finally been cleared as not being Harry's girlfriend it seemed as though the entire school's eyes had shifted to Ron. Apparently the assumption was that if it wasn't one then it was the other. And they weren't disappointed, Ron was decided to be 'The Thing Harry Potter Would Miss the Most'. As though that were some kind of title. The girls thought it was romantic.

5th year had seen them closer then ever before, with Ron showing a caring side Hermoine hadn't thought he possessed. He wasn't the type to coddle or smother, but all the same, he took care of Harry in a competent and complete manner. And Harry seemed to lap it up, seemed to accept it from him in a way she knew he wouldn't from anyone else. Ron could talk Harry into doing things when no one else could, could get him to listen to reason when he wanted to fly off the handle.

The more she thought about it the more sense it made, and as the days rolled by she realized she was slowly coming to terms with the idea. There were times, though, when she would catch them glancing at each other and start, or curiously wonder what they dared to get up to in their dorms.

By 7th year Hermoine had heard the stories about girls wandering in and out of the dorm rooms late at night; some of her own roommates could give very accurate descriptions of the interior of the boys' rooms. She knew Seamus and Dean had next to no shame, and with Neville often too distracted to notice, she wondered what they did or didn't do. What they'd done or hadn't done. What they wanted to do. She wondered if she was being obsessive, and when she thought about it she decided she probably was, but that was a part of her personality she had accepted a long time ago.

It was by pure accident, that one night, she herself had been wandering back to her own dorm room at, depending on your perspective, an either very late or very early hour. She had almost missed them, would have missed them, had she not been so used to hearing that odd little snorting noise Harry made when he was trying desperately not to laugh.

They had stumbled into the common room, barely looking to see if anyone else was in the deserted space. They had been too busy groping, and chuckling, trying to shush each other even as they made more noise doing so. She had peered around the corner, although to this day she thought she could have been standing straight ahead of them and they wouldn't have noticed until they bumped into her.

She saw as Ron kept tripping over Harry's feet, which were moving unsteadily as Harry tried to walk backwards and lean forwards at the same time. They had mumbled silly words to one another, taunts and teases that spoke of a long standing relationship, of understanding the other person well enough to know where and how to poke fun without being hurtful. They made it up 3 steps before Ron was pinned against the wall, Harry cutting Ron off with kiss. At this point Hermoine had her head so far around the corner she was about to fall down, but still they didn't see her.

It was gentle but intense, and then suddenly it changed, like a fire that takes a moment to warm up before it really begins to burn. Suddenly the light, teasing tone was gone. The groping became more frenzied, and it wasn't Ron against the wall any longer, he had literally pushed Harry all the way back to the other side of the staircase, so that it was Harry who was now pinned. From what Hermoine could tell, Harry didn't seem to mind. She doubted he'd even noticed.

She didn't know why she stood there and stared, why she had to see how it ended, but nevertheless, she stayed. Stayed until they pulled apart, until Harry managed to convince Ron to let him go and the both of them reluctantly went upstairs.

She went to her own bed then, her mind swirling like a tornado around the one central image of the pair of them kissing. By the time the sun began to rise she came to one conclusion: she no longer felt a loss. She knew she had, could see it now that she no longer possessed it. Hermoine was of the opinion that, of anyone she had met, Harry deserved to be happy. He deserved to smile the way he smiled in the empty common room, deserved to light up the way he seemed to when Ron was kissing him, as though he were a Christmas tree surrounded in lights someone had finally thought to plug in. Hermoine wasn't a romantic, was too pragmatic for that, but all the same she felt something stir inside her, a gentle joy for her friends, and a faint longing for something similar for herself.

T

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